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PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Five billion dollars — that’s what Chinese students are contributing to the U.S. economy — students who return home with language skills that help them to get better jobs in their home country.

As recently as six years ago, China and India each began sending 100,000 students to the US. But India’s numbers dropped by 3,000, because their families were less able to pay the full cost of education and, with our depressed economy, opportunities for work are less.

Those who came in prior years were graduate students. Now they’re undergraduates who seek English language instruction and have an impact on campus culture, both in and out of the classroom.

While enrollments of foreign students have been down in general, China is the exception, along with Saudi Arabia, where thousands have come here on government scholarships. An interesting article by Beth McMurtrie in The Chronicle of Higher Education profiles the increases and decreases of countries and territories with students in the US from 2011-2012.